All Revved Up

Rick Treworgy has a track record of successful business ventures, but he’s not sure his latest enterprise will bring in much money. He doesn’t seem to mind, though. Muscle Car City is the culmination of his "35-year obsession."

Muscle Car City—home to a car museum, diner, used-car lot, service station/restaurant, speed shop and gift shop—opened in March at the site of a former Wal-Mart on Tamiami Trail just south of Punta Gorda. Inside the 99,000-square-foot building are displayed more than 200 of the highest performance cars ever made by General Motors.

With huge, V-8 motors tweaked for speed, these cars became known as "muscle cars," and Treworgy fell in love with them almost from their beginning in the mid-1960s. He began buying and selling, profiting each time; then he sold fewer and kept more.

Over the years, as his collection demanded more space, Treworgy built four buildings to house them. He kept them out of public view, allowing only a few tours by Corvette enthusiast clubs and similar groups.

When Wal-Mart vacated the Tamiami Trail location in Punta Gorda, Treworgy bought the building and property for $6.5 million, consolidated his collection there and opened it to public view.

Be assured that his is not just any collection. It has been called the finest GM muscle-car collection in the country, and the cars are in showroom condition, meticulously maintained so that any of them can be fired up and driven.

The collection features just about every powerful Corvette ever produced. (Treworgy has no interest in less powerful models and disdains a period in the 1970s when ’Vettes, in his view, were underpowered.)

"These are the best of the best and the baddest of the bad," he says, taking in the view in the massive museum.

Treworgy, now 59, moved to Punta Gorda from Michigan in 1959, graduated from Charlotte High School and completed two years at what is now Edison State College in Charlotte County.